Rudy Giuliani - 2008 Presidential Candidate

Rudy Giuliani, what more can a person say? He stood tall and strong when his city was attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001. He rallied that city proving that no terrorist act could defeat the city that never sleeps.

Here is a little about Rudy Giuliani, Time Magazine's, 2001 Person of the Year:

Rudolph W. Giuliani was born in 1944 to a working class family in Brooklyn, New York. As the grandson of Italian immigrants, Rudy was taught the value of a strong work ethic and a deep respect for America's ideal of equal opportunity. He attended Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, Manhattan College, and New York University Law School.

After joining the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudy rose quickly through the ranks, becoming the Chief of the Narcotics Unit at age 29. In 1975, Rudy was recruited to work in Washington, D.C., and was appointed Associate Deputy Attorney General and chief of staff to the Deputy Attorney General. In 1977, Rudy returned to New York to the private practice of law.

After the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981, Rudy was named Associate Attorney General, the third highest position in the Department of Justice. He supervised all of the US attorney offices' law enforcement agencies.

In 1983, Rudy became United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he spearheaded successful efforts against organized crime, white collar criminals, drug dealers and corrupt elected officials. Some of his best known cases include the groundbreaking mafia prosecutions in the "Pizza Connection" and "The Commission" cases, Wall Street corruption cases, and the convictions of corrupt political figures. Few U.S. Attorneys in history can match his record.

In 1993, Rudy became the first Republican elected Mayor of the City of New York in a generation. Campaigning on the slogan "One City, One Standard," he focused on reducing crime, reforming welfare and improving the quality of life. In 1997, he was re-elected with 57% in a city in which Democrats outnumbered Republicans five to one.

Under Mayor Giuliani's leadership, overall crime was cut by 56%, murder was cut by 66%, and New York City - once considered the crime capital of the country - became the safest large city in America according to the FBI. New York City's law enforcement strategy has become a model for other cities around the world, particularly the CompStat program, which won the 1996 Innovations in Government Award from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

When Mayor Giuliani took office, one of every seven New Yorkers was on welfare. Mayor Giuliani implemented the largest and most successful welfare-to-work initiative in the country, turning welfare offices into Job Centers, leading to the reduction of welfare rolls by 640,000, or nearly 60%, to the lowest level since 1966.

Mayor Giuliani also took decisive steps to restore fiscal responsibility to New York City, reducing or eliminating 23 city taxes while turning an inherited $2.3 billion budget deficit into a multi-billion dollar surplus. These reforms helped lead New York City to an era of broad-based growth, with approximately 423,000 new private sector jobs created in eight years, as business returned to the center of city life. As news of the New York renaissance spread around the nation and the world, tourism grew to record levels. Under Rudy Giuliani's leadership, New York City became the best-known example of the resurgence of urban America.

On September 11th, 2001, America suffered the worst attack in its history. After surviving the fall of the Towers, Mayor Giuliani immediately began leading the recovery of his city as it faced its darkest hour. For his efforts, former first lady Nancy Reagan presented Mayor Giuliani with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Freedom Award, he was knighted by the Queen of England, and named Person of the Year by Time magazine. In 2002, he wrote and published a number one best-seller, Leadership, which has sold over 1 million copies worldwide.

Limited by New York City law to two terms as mayor, Rudy founded Giuliani Partners in January, 2002, quickly establishing the consulting firm as a leader in the fields of emergency preparedness, public safety, crisis management, energy and health care. In 2005, Rudy became a name partner in the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani. The sixty year old firm, previously known as Bracewell Patterson, has over 400 attorneys practicing in nine offices around the world. Bio pulled from here.

Here is New York City's former mayor's stance on the important issues of the day.

Abortion: Rudy Giuliani supports reasonable restrictions on abortion such as parental notification with a judicial bypass and a ban on partial birth abortion – except when the life of the mother is at stake. He’s proud that adoptions increased 66% while abortions decreased over 16% in New York City when he was Mayor. But Rudy understands that this is a deeply personal moral dilemma, and people of good conscience can disagree respectfully. To watch Rudy's commitment to increasing adoptions, reducing abortions and protecting the quality of life for our children, please click here.

Summary: Rudy Giuliani has publicly stated for many years that he is pro-abortion. Since the presidential campaign began he has changed his stance on this. I find him to be a fence sitter now, unwilling to take a stance one way or the other. As clearly as I can understand the doublespeak here, he is pro-abortion.

Budget and Economy: Before Rudy was elected Mayor, tax-and-spend policies created billion-dollar deficits and led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in New York City. Rudy restored fiscal discipline by controlling spending and cutting wasteful programs. He cut the size of city-funded government bureaucracy by nearly 20% - excluding the number of cops on the street and teachers in the classroom. Rudy’s record proves he can deliver results and return fiscal discipline to the federal government.

Summary: There is no question that Rudy Giuliani proved he could manage a city the size of a small country in restoring fiscal responsibility. He supports fiscal responsibility and has proven such by his record. If he could do it in New York City, he could probably do so in Washington.

Education: As Mayor, Rudy Giuliani worked to reform the nation’s largest public school system, with over 1 million school children. He increased school funding and hired new teachers, while insisting on reforms that ended social promotion, abolished principal tenure, and created a Charter School Fund. Rudy is also a strong supporter of school choice, believing that it is one of the great civil rights issues of our time. To watch Rudy's commitment to giving every child in America a quality education and every parent school choice, please click here.

Summary: I'm pleased with Rudy's stance on education. While realizing how critical it is to the success of a nation, he also has clearly proven his ability to do so in his reform of the New York City public school system. It will be interesting if he understands when a president needs to keep his hands off and when he needs to become involved. Because what one can do as a mayor is mostly certainly not one can do as president of the United States of America.

Energy and Oil:“Every potential solution must be pursued – from nuclear power to increased energy exploration to more aggressive investment in alternative energy sources. I believe that America can achieve energy independence through a national strategy that emphasizes diversification, innovation, and conservation.” - Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Learn more about Rudy's commitment to America's energy problem here.

Summary: He, like Mitt Romney, believes that we must free ourselves of independence on foreign oil. He has committed to exploring the alternatives. Can he and Mitt stand up to the oil companies . . . that remains to be seen in both candidates.

Illegal Immigration: In an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, Rudy Giuliani stated, "The reality is, the way I look at illegal immigration, particularly in light of the terrorist threat we face, is that the focus has to be — we need a tamper-proof I.D. card.

"We need to know who's in the United States. We need to know everyone who's in the United States that comes in here from a foreign country. And we have to separate the ones who are dangerous from the ones who aren't.

To accomplish that, we need a fence. We need a technological fence. We need a border patrol. We need people to come forward who are working so they'll get identified, get fingerprinted, get photographed.

"And then we should focus our attention on the people who don't come forward. And there's where you're going to find the drug dealers . . . I have always been a proponent of legal immigration. I've always been a proponent of a strong and secure border. I was in the Reagan administration. I was during the time I was mayor.

"But I had to deal with practical problems, and I dealt with them, I think, about as well or better than any mayor during my time, because I took a city that was exceedingly dangerous and I made it into a city that was the safest large city in America."

Summary: Giuliani's biggest problem in this area is he has not the track record in what he says is his stance. As mayor of New York City he welcomed illegal immigrants with open arms, insisting that city workers not deprive them of any of the rights American citizens have. Now he says he will stand strong on immigration. I hesitate to believe him.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms: Rudy Giuliani is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. When he was Mayor of a city suffering an average of almost 2000 murders a year, he protected people by getting illegal handguns out of the hands of criminals. As a result, shootings fell by 72% and the murder rate was cut by two-thirds. But Rudy understands that what works in New York doesn’t necessarily work in Mississippi or Montana. To watch Rudy's comments on every citizen's Constitutional right to bear arms, please click here.

Summary: He says he understands the difference between the East and West, but I have my doubts. He trampled on a lot of constitutional rights in order to make New York City safe. I don't believe constitutional rights should be trampled on . . . our forefathers gave them to us for good reason. However, he has committed to upholding the 2nd Amendment.

Tax Reform: Rudy cut taxes 23 times in New York and turned a $2.3 billion budget deficit into a multi-billion dollar surplus, while balancing the city’s budget. Because he turned his conservative principles into action, New York City taxpayers saved more than $9 billion in taxes and enjoyed their lowest tax burden in decades, while the economy grew and city government saw its revenues increase from the lower tax rates. Rudy Giuliani believes in supply-side economics, because he did it and he saw it work. To watch Rudy's commitment to cutting taxes and ensuring economic growth, please click here.

Summary: No one can say Rudy didn't deliver fiscally as mayor of New York City. He did the job with tax cuts and that says a lot about what the man can do with a serious deficit.

War on Terror: Rudy Giuliani believes winning the war on terror is the great responsibility of our generation. America cannot afford to go back to the days of playing defense, with inconsistent responses to terrorist attacks, because weakness only encourages aggression. Americans want peace. We’re at war not because we want to be, but because the terrorists declared war on us - well before the attacks of September 11th. Rudy understands that freedom is going to win this war of ideas. America will win the war on terror. To watch Rudy's commitment to staying on offense against terror, please click here.

Like all Americans, Rudy Giuliani prays for the success of our troops in Iraq and their safe return home. But he believes setting an artificial timetable for withdrawal from Iraq now would be a terrible mistake, because it would only embolden our enemies. Iraq is only one front in the larger war on terror, and failure there would lead to a broader and bloodier regional conflict in the near future. Building an accountable Iraq will assist in reducing the threat of terrorism.

Summary: Rudy Giuliani, maybe better than any other candidate in the race, understand the serious of the War on Terror. As mayor during the 9/11 attacks, he experienced firsthand the horrors of terrorism on American soil. He understand we have been declared war on by a fanatical faction of the Muslim religion. He understand that we must not back down in any way, shape or form.

This is but a brief summary of the man and politician. Please go to his official site to learn more about him.

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